The people started chanting the exact second when the machine started working. The conductor moved his hands like a machine himself, only with much, much more grace.

It was truly stunning, even after everything Mary had seen and heard. The chorus was so varied that she had trouble following each melodic line as they flowed from one beat to another, surfing up and down on the invisible waves gently pushed toward the auditorium by the lonely man commanding the army. And then, there was Frank, moving around the machine in a dance-like manner in the rhythm of the wordless song.

Clouds of flour, vapour and smoke rose from the device as it worked on the recipe. A glass bowl was occasionally rising from its depths, flying around the chaotic contraption as if to demonstrate to the world its mysterious contents. It started with thick gold honey and smooth white milk slowly mixing in a bizarre vortex, and from there, it went downhill.

The eggs were tossed in with their shells still on, and they flew in from the opposite sides, twirling around like a young couple during the first dance of their wedding. The conductor moved his arms like a spider weaving a bride's veil, and the voices responded with a mixture of pure emotion. Eventually, the music reached a major crescendo, and the eggs met in the eye of the maelstrom, the shells exploding all over the bowls as the contents fell to the deepest depths of the sweet ocean.

Frank, at this point, was operating the controls with a grace of a pianist performing his retirement show - visibly tired, yet with mastery unseen among those without the age to back it up. He kept running from one lever to a button, then flipped a dozen switches without missing a single step, punctuating each note with an action to match. He never looked at the other man - he didn't have to. The harmony was perfect, at least to Mary's untrained eyes.

Then the music plunged into deep, dark tones, chants that just barely escaped Mary's cognition yet managed to stay entirely alien all the same. She could almost see the dark sky towering ominously over puny men, and felt the horrible pressure binding her in her skull.

Suddenly, a high-pitched voice pierced the eldrich cloak like a soaring-white needle.

Then another.

And another.

And just as they rang, tiny specks of sugar flew into the bowl, glinting both meekly and defiantly for a moment before becoming one with the fluid. Soon the battle between light and darkness commenced: bright stars against the nothingness, sugar against the torrents beneath the ever-raging surface.

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Eventually, they merged into a perfect union - a smooth mass, no longer dotted, but neither as sharp nor violent. The voices fell into harmony too, converging on the middle tones - still slightly unsettling but no longer terrifying.

The vortex slowed down and almost flattened when birds started to chirp. Mary had no idea how or when - there were no such animals in the room, just a bunch of misfits, but still, the sound rang. And as it rang, puffs of white powder sprayed the primal work of art. They hovered for a moment like clouds over the troubled mass before falling like rain on the fissured ground, hungered for the slightest drop of moisture.

It felt like an eternity until Frank invited the floury heavens to meet the ever-restless earth, for the two to merge a perfect, round-ish form. The conductor led the voices into an almost silence.

Suddenly the pink flames raged inside the bowl like two flamboyances of flamingos gathered to fight a long-prophesized battle cheered on by voices of the auditorium. The strength of the gathering made Mary's very bones vibrate, and nagged at her brain to try and join the mighty chorus, to praise the eternal struggle of colours against the dullness of every passing day. She really wanted to answer the call and give in, but she feared her voice would not pick the right side and that it could ruin the masterwork she was witnessing.

And then, it stopped.

A single, insanely-high voice announced the arrival of the final piece - a gold, blindingly-shining letter 'w' slowly descended upon the baked pastry. Everyone went still, alive people held their breath. Everyone but the conductor gently directing the unseen singer with the tiniest motions of a single baton, and Frank piloting the final ingredient with an arcade-like joystick.

The sound had almost drilled right through Mary's head when the letter finally touched the porous surface, and everything went quiet. For a second, the ensuing silence was so deep that Mary could hear other people's hearts beating in their chests.

And then the applause started.

It was as loud as the music before it, if not even louder. Everyone was clapping, cheering, shouting incoherent words, or in some cases - loudly clearing their noses into artfully embroidered handkerchiefs. Mary tried to join in on the general commotion, but her voice was too quiet for anyone to hear her right now, and she didn't dare raise it any louder.

Both Frank and the conductor had to come forward and bow at least four times before people got bored and started leaving. It took surprisingly long on one hand, and short on the other for Mary to be left with just Mossie, Paolo, and Arthur.

They walked to the scene, where the two performers were looking up close at their magnum opus.

“So what do we have here, exactly?” Mary asked, glad that her voice couldn't really tremble at the moment.

“Hm...” Arthur made his great contribution to the conversation.

“I think it's a muffin,” the conductor said in a curious kind of voice.

“Is it, though?” Frank was tilting his head to take a look from an unnatural angle. “It looks a bit goofy.”